It chanced that they met Dr. Simonds coming away from the house, and proposed to him the question of the removal. It would not do, the doctor declared at once,—the disease had made too much progress. To remove him now would be more dangerous than to leave him where he was.
"Then I must go and see him," Robert said, resolutely. "You know he has only his mother, and I must spend all the time I can spare from school with him."
"But I will send an excellent nurse, my son. Do you not see that I cannot have you expose yourself?"
"Send the nurse, too, please, papa; but do not keep me from going. He will not care for the nurse, and he does care very much for me. I do not believe in the danger, and I know how glad he will be to see me."
Mr. Shaftsbury hesitated. This boy was as the apple of his eye. Must he indeed begin so soon to look danger in the face, for the sake of others? But dared he withhold him, when the boy felt that honor and duty called? It ended by his walking in with him quietly.
It was something to see how Jamie's face brightened. He had been very dull and stupid all day, his mother said, and some of the time his mind had been wandering. But now a glad, eager light came into his eyes, and a smile curved his parched lips. He put out his hot hands.
"Oh! is it you, my little gentleman?" he said: "I had rather see you than any thing else in the world."
"Well, then, I will come every day as soon as I am through school," Robert Shaftsbury answered.
"Do you know what you have done?" his father asked, when, at last, they stood outside the house together.